Hillary Clinton: I'm Not Sure Trump Knows Puerto Ricans Are Americans

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday launched a blistering attack against President Donald Trump for his near-silence on the humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico, questioning the president’s focus on a days-long campaign against NFL athletes on Twitter while the U.S. territory has struggled with universal devastation.

“I’m not sure he knows that Puerto Ricans are American citizens,” Clinton told Sirius XM’s Zerlina Maxwell on Monday afternoon.

But apart from a series of tweets published on Monday night, President Trump has remained largely silent about the unfolding disaster. Trump acknowledged on Monday that the island was in “deep trouble,” but appeared to put much of the blame for the island’s predicament on its financial woes.

During appearances on Sirius XM and MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes,” Clinton described the president’s approach as a political calculus and being disinterest in the fate of the 3.5 million American residents living on the island.

“He doesn’t think that has any political relevance and it’s certainly not personally important,” Clinton told Chris Hayes on Monday evening. “He clearly doesn’t want to talk about Puerto Rico, more than 3.5 million American citizens, along with the U.S. Virgin Islands. Not interested, doesn’t say a word about it.”

Hayes, who was hosting his show while the president tweeted, expressed his own disbelief at Trump’s short tweets just moments after Puerto Rico’s governor told him that 60 percent of the island’s population had no access to clean water.

INSANE for the president talking about PR's debts to "Wall Street" while 60% of ppl have *no safe drinking water*!!!

“He attacks black athletes as he did starting with his rally in Alabama ... he attacks them for protesting peacefully for equality, for standing up for what they believe. And he does it once again to dog whistle to his base,” Clinton said. “It’s quite telling that he is willing to attack black athletes, he never says anything of an insulting manner towards white supremacists or neo-Nazis or Ku Klux Klanners or Vladimir Putin, right?”